Winners and losers from the SCOTUS gay-marriage hearings (and why skim milk is the new broccoli)

The oral arguments in the Supreme Court about California’s Proposition 8 and the Defense of Marriage Act took place over the course of two days, with arguments for each case spanning just a few hours.

It will be a few months before we know the results of these historic cases, but the Hardball Sideshow took a look at some winners and well, not-so-winners, of the past few days.

Amid all the spectators outside the Court, the only way for any one voice to come through was through creative signage. Hat tip to our friends at Buzzfeed for compiling some of the most inventive.

The most Twitter-worthy moment from inside the Supreme Court came at us when skim milk became the new broccoli, thanks to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. During the Supreme Court hearings on healthcare, Justice Antonin Scalia questioned whether the individual mandate in the Affordable Care Act was similar to forcing people to buy broccoli.

In Wednesday’s arguments, Justice Ginsburg suggested that Paul Clement, the lawyer who defended DOMA on behalf of House Republicans, was diminishing the significance of the benefits that coincide with marriage. Ginsburg suggested that with DOMA in place, marriages recognized only by certain states amounted to “skim milk” marriages.

If you ask Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi who wound up on the losing side of the week, it was Clement. “What a stale role to play in life,” she told reporters on Wednesday.

And no matter what side of the same-sex marriage debate you’re on, it’s doesn’t take much to figure out that some arguments just don’t hold up. Case in point: at a protest organized by the National Organization of Marriage earlier this week, Bishop Harry Jackson Jr. contended that among the benefits of heterosexual marriage is that sexual abuse does not occur in heterosexual households.

Check out the Hardball Sideshow above for the rest of the highs and lows, including input from Stephen Colbert.